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fashion

At the beginning of the Summer, I purged some of the clothes in my closet. That purge included ridding some clothes I hand made in the past like this dress, high-low skirt, shirt dress (Archer pattern modification) and this floral skirt (I kept the top). They were made four years ago and worn many times, so the fabric was starting to fall apart. The floral skirt was nice, but the organza insert felt too sexy for me to wear in my daily life as a mom. As sad as I was to part with my creation, it also gave me an opportunity to make new summer clothes!

Since I made this parka, I wanted to incorporate more of khaki color in my closet. I have a lot of white and black as basic neutral colors but just black and white felt boring. As I always do, I browse through Pinterest to collect pretty images of the dresses to pin down what I want to make. I pin those in my “Fashion” board.

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Here is the end result! I think it looks like the closest to #4 above. I might be able to wear it in the fall as well with a black turtle neck inside. The fabric is from Nippori Tomato, second floor knit section. It’s a medium weight jersey with a bit of velvet like feel in the right side of the fabric. It’s soft and comfortable!

The pattern was borrowed from my recent client work. I lengthened the skirt length by 5cm and added big patch pockets on both sides. I love the pockets and use them often to hold key when I am running out of the door.

Winter is my least favorite season. Not only do I hate being cold, but also fashion wise, I get sick of multiple layers. Usually I end up wearing jeans and a Uniqlo sweater. So boring! But…..I had a chance to get to Nippori last weekend and that gave me some sewjo to make myself something fun to wear. After going through piles of knits on the second floor of Tomato fabric store, I ended up with this beige knit. It is medium to thick knit made out of 80% of rayon. The rest of the fabric content is a mixture of polyester and polyurethane, so the knit does not go too stretchy after some washes. The wrong side of the fabric is flannelized to keep it warm and it feels good against the skin.The pattern was from a store bought dress I had. I did not do anything special except for lengthening the sleeves. I sewed the front neckline with an elastic so that the neckline would not get stretched. The whole thing is serged and the hem was done by hand. This way the hem sewing line is invisible. Sewing was simple and in total it took less than two hours to make.

It fits pretty well, though I could do without some creases in the back. But, at the same time, I did not want the dress to be skin tight like one of those f21 dresses that college kids wear to clubs…
When Kiko saw me wearing the dress, she said “mommy, new dress?! But it is too small for you!”. In her mind a “dress” needs to be long and fluffy like some kind of Disney princess. I’m planning on wearing with cardigan, long boots (from Zara) and plaid scarf for now. Once the weather warms up, I want to pair it with white sneakers and leather jacket.

Last but not least, my favorite online shop, Shopbop is running a spring sale from 3/1-3/5. Check out here.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the progress of the wedding dress I was working on. It’s finally completed! I could not be happier with the result. I really enjoyed sewing this dress, perhaps this is the kind of style of dress that I would actually wear if I were to get married again. This dress is quite comfortable to wear as well, with a built-in bra, small cap sleeves for extra support and light weight chiffon and silk satin skirt.

Attaching the lace at the chiffon hem was the most time consuming part of making this dress. I hand stitched about 13 meters of lace! I could not use a sewing machine for fear of the chiffon puckering. It took about 10 hours just attaching the lace alone!

The dress has a sweep length train. Small pearl button and a loop were added in the center back, so the train can be shortened for reception.